Friday, October 17, 2014

A Christ-centered Papal Visit per pavore, por favor, please!

MY sympathies lie with those who have
taken the initiative in trying to shore up enthusiasm for the long-announced-and-much-anticipated
coming of Pope Francis to the Philippines. They understand the power of images.
The media hype over the life-size cardboard replicas of the Holy Father and
such other paraphernalia says a lot about the excitement that has already been stirred
up at least among Catholics and admirers of Pope Francis. Everything looks neat.

Except
for one thing.

And
this one thing is too crucial to ignore: Are these efforts not missing the real
and essential significance of the Holy Father’s visit, which is to proclaim
Jesus Christ and not himself, in our midst and wherever he goes? Would Pope
Francis be happy with a huge personality cult around him in the Philippines
instead of the continued growth of faith in Jesus Christ, unwavering hope and
both being expressed by love that does justice and compassion among Filipinos?
If the Holy Father himself is centered on Jesus the Master, should we not be?

I
know I need not belabor this point.

Being
a Super Typhoon Yolanda survivor myself, I share in the joy of her victims in
both Samar and Leyte as well as in other Central and Western Visayas provinces,
who are anticipating a holy person’s visit. But it is a joy that comes from him
whose presence the Holy Father brings and proclaims. The thought of that presence
of him who caused the infant John the Baptist to “leap for joy” (Lk 1:44)
somehow has inspired me to make an ‘unsolicited suggestion’ to those who are
distributing the Holy Father’s cardboard replicas.

I
am not in the habit of making direct suggestions. But this time I am taking
exception to that. Please allow me to do it indirectly.

Just
days after Yolanda I witnessed unforgettable traces of an incredibly horrific
devastation in Brgy Carmen, Hernani, Eastern Samar. The residents’ huts and
their barangay chapel were either blown away or torn down into skeletal remains
by mammoth waves and killer winds. All that was left of the chapel were parts
of its walls and a roofless ceiling framework. The altar was nowhere in sight.
But in its place the residents gathered images of the Sto. Niṅo, Mama Mary and
the saints on top of a long table or the remnants of their altar niche.

Then
out of the blue our group saw a figure of a young man slowly walking his way to
the altar. He had the huge crucifix of the chapel and he was carrying it on his
shoulder the way Jesus is usually portrayed when he carries his cross. He
wanted to put it where it belongs: at the center of the bare chapel altar. How,
neither my companions nor I could tell. One of us, though, was a professional
photographer, and he captured the scene in one gripping moment.

That
young man’s figure reminds me of the Holy Father, Pope Francis, and what he has
been doing for the Church and for the world. He has been busy proclaiming to us
the Crucified Jesus and bearing him on his shoulder so as to restore him at the
center of our hearts and the heart of every human being by his humility and
compassion, the humility of Jesus Christ who “emptied himself and took the form
of a slave” (Phil 2:7), the compassion of Jesus who “dined with sinners and
outcasts” (Mt 9:10-11).

Why
not a replica that truly captures who the Holy Father is and what his ministry
really means?